Author
Topic: Fargo (TV series) (Read 19479 times)

A drifter named Lorne Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton) arrives in small-town Minnesota and influences the population with his malice and violence, including put-upon insurance salesman Lester Nygaard (Martin Freeman).

10 episodes and that's it.

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"oh you haven’t truly watched a film if you didn’t watch it on the big screen" mumbles the bourgeois dipshit

apparently television is getting smarter. i dont know if it started with the wire or breaking bad, but the latter sure made it more obvious. true detective, now this? jesus christ almighty. the coens vibe is all over this obvsly, but also tarantino. and definitely vince gilligan. the acting is flawless, the tone is dark and hilarious and methodic, the dialogue is crazy awesome in a surreal and beautiful way. everything works. correct me if im wrong. BEGIN

A tribute to one of my favorite movies ever, but never a "ripoff." Truly engaging and I can't fuckin' wait for the next episode.

Billy Bob Thornton kills.

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“The myth by no means finds its adequate objectification in the spoken word. The structure of the scenes and the visible imagery reveal a deeper wisdom than the poet himself is able to put into words and concepts” – Friedrich Nietzsche

Yes, it was a very promising start. It left me wondering what the hell will happen next, like in Breaking Bad there was this sense of writers cornering themselves to impossible situations.

Billy Bob and Martin Freeman are exceptional. It really is to Thornton's credit than by the last scene in this episode, you feel you know him enough to hope for the worst in some dark humored horrible twist.

spoilers but you need to be on this shit immediately-----so they are incredibly inspired by brba, as is most evident in their past three openings, which they execute flawlessly. such beauty and precision in these shots.

thorntons scene with dennis reynolds is pretty hilarious, but its more satisfying seeing his character be continuously bold in a really creepy manner. i hope it doesnt get old by ep 5.

grimley pulling over billybob was an amazing scene in ep 1, and now it just started to be kind of crumbling apart. the stuff near the end definitely makes up for it, but the scene in the bathroom near the beginning is ridiculously clumsy. the flashbacks are annoying, but necessary i guess.

i love the quirkiness of the characters, their personalities man. jesus. this town is so coens, almost jeunet at times. the whole scene with hess' wife is amazing. she is an incredible actress and insanely sexy. the brothers haven't gotten on my nerves yet surprisingly, maybe because they keep injuring each other in incredibly realistic scenes. the drug dealer scene was the first shit i seriously havent liked in the show, but its cartoonish enough for me to let it slide.

molly is a wonderful character, and in my opinion, much deeper than frances mcdormands'. anyone disagree? the spider sex story was fucking awesome. try to unthink that idea. this show is loading up on iconic and memorable moments.

as i said, thorntons near superhuman boldness and shadiness are way too fucking cool, man. i dont know what it is. the fact that lester doesnt know how to take care of a wound makes zero sense. i dont know how much longer i can consider that NOT a strike against this show. the scene with lester and the two guys from fargo was kind of painful. why would adult HW be signing to lester? that just makes him look stupid, not intimidating, which he totally was before.

the fake drop from molly was pretty obvious, but still very impressive on her end.and the whole shit between her and grimley was really intense, in a slow excruciating way.

i agree with you molly definitely has more depth than marge, only thing felt off about this ep is the sequence with stavros when he finds his dog outside the shots look odd & the editing bad there the ending was amazing though thornton is great, do you have any empathy for lester? i dont but it feels like the writers want you to

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"oh you haven’t truly watched a film if you didn’t watch it on the big screen" mumbles the bourgeois dipshit

I think "empathy" is not something you should seek as a writer. More like curiosity, or some sort of interest, which is what Lester causes me. I very rarely feel empathy towards fictional characters, maybe for a couple of moments, but that happens with anyone. I don't like Lester at all but I'm curious to see how he deals with this situation, what comes out of him.

I would prefer the show would not have such mirrored references to the film (that scene at the diner was like the mike scene in the film), mainly because it puts us in a position to consider wether one character is more interesting than it's counterpart in the other work. that said:

SPOILERS FOR BOTH FILM AND SHOW

What I liked about Frances McDormand in Fargo is that there seemed to be no way than this character was going to solve this crime. And there was the feeling she was even kind of dumb. So the expectation was, she will lose it, she will toughen up to deal with these evil fuckers. But she just focused on the case and managed to make it work. In the show, Molly is way too smart from the first moment. It's like she's the only smart cop in the world, and that makes it a little less interesting, because you know she will be the one who figures it all out. Hope I'm wrong.

Let me get my complaints out of the way first, though. As an actual Minnesotan, I was distracted by the garish Minnesotan accents, which are so exaggerated that I'm not sure how much of it is meant as satire. (The scene with the prostitute saying "ohh yaaa" is surely satire, right?) I'm from the Twin Cities area but have traveled all over the state, and there are turns of phrase that I have legitimately never heard before. I have maybe come close to hearing accents that thick a handful of times in my life, but these days I think you would have to venture into the farest reaches of northern Minnesota.

I've actually spent some time in Bemidji. It's near the Chippewa National Forest, which is amazing and I used to go there every summer. My friend also lived in Bemidji for college. It's kind of a tourist/college town. It doesn't necessarily resemble what I've seen in the show so far, but that could change. It will be really interesting to see how they portray Duluth, because it's kind of a big city with a massive downtown and legitimately feels like Minneapolis when you're there. I was there in the fall so it's fresh in my mind.

Two dead giveaways that they're getting things wrong:

(1) Accents are the same from generation to generation. I defy them to find any living 40-year old in Bemidji who has an accent like Martin Freeman's, or his brother's, or his wife's. And the bully's kids would definitely not sound like that.

(2) "I heard it's gonna be negative ten." No one, and I mean no one, says "negative ten." It's "ten below" or "ten above." If you're going to get anything right, for God's sake get this one thing right.

Moving on...

There were way too many cartoon characters in the first episode, the bully and the wife in particular. But since they're now very much dead, maybe that won't be a problem. Still was a ham-handed setup for sure.

This is already my favorite Martin Freeman role. He was pretty much created for it. I love the way his blackout rage is shown... or not shown. We never see him punch his brother. Also with his wife... it's like he blacks out for a moment, and suddenly the hammer is sunk in her forehead. Great stuff.

Paint cans were so on the nose... I might have groaned. Less of that, please.

It's impressive that they managed to get to ice fishing in the first episode, but that's okay. I hope they return to it, because ice fishing is legitimately ridiculous.

if you guys have not seen last nights episode and are not blown away by everything it contained, yall are no longer my friends. this is the best show i've ever fucking seen. devastating. they put a BrBa season finale into the end of EVERY episode.

Axolotl [21|May 11:00 AM]: fargo goddamn what the fuckAxolotl [21|May 11:01 AM]: was 03 to shocked to gush here after the episode or somethingAxolotl [21|May 11:01 AM]: tooAxolotl [21|May 11:06 AM]: this episode was the magnoliest thing I've seen on television, for a number of reasonsAxolotl [21|May 11:08 AM]: I was not as big a fan as 03, but man this one reached Breaking Bad levels of entertainment, and way surpassed it in brutality to the point it seems too brutal, even meanAnd I'm not saying that as a big fan of breaking bad, which I'm not, but they're both operating in the same sphere

which i agree with wholeheartedly but then......

Axolotl [21|May 11:20 AM]: you know, ignore my comment about this being too brutal. It's adequately brutal.Axolotl [21|May 11:21 AM]: on further reflection I don't think this episode was as great as I thought it was 10 minutes ago

Wow, that was total explicit homage, right? Bold choice. Even some of the same camerawork going on. Are people going to be talking about this? Was it just the two moments, fishstorm and hospital smile, or was there more?

Anyway, great episode as usual. The "suicide by cop" scene was indeed brutal, but I thought the horror of it was beautifully executed.

Molly has to be alive. I just can't accept her being unceremoniously offed like that.